


Undyne on a date with Chara

by morefishplease



Series: Comfy Fish Stories [36]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Dating, Dinner, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-19 23:39:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10650483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morefishplease/pseuds/morefishplease
Summary: Undyne and Chara go on a date.





	Undyne on a date with Chara

Undyne reaches forward, takes a slow sip of her water, keeps her eyes fixed on Chara. Oh, Chara, Undyne thinks, inscrutable to the max, nitrogen queen of the North Pole. What’s going on in that head?

Chara watches their waiter walk past carrying someone else’s food. She sees Undyne staring at her out of the corner of her eye but nothing stirs in her in response to her recognizance. She has no need to think it but her mantra would be the same as a pond of placid water, unpulled by the moon, no ripples, no raindrops. No fish, either, to muck about and cause bubbles to riiiise from the deep and pop tinnylike on the surface. Just long and wide and deep. Her eyes snap back to Undyne, halfshutter, mechanical in their motion, and Undyne starts back – oh, so imperceptible! A hairsbreadth back in her chair, a hairsbreadth raise of her eyebrows, a hairsbreadth incrementing upwards of her cycling fishtime heartbeat. Chara still notices, instantly suppresses a smile so fast that her lips don’t even twitch.

 

▪ ▪ ▪

 

Undyne stares at Chara and Chara stares back. She really is quite pretty, Undyne thinks. It was that that made her acquiesce to Chara’s iceblock-formal flirting, the (perhaps vain) hope that she could engage lightly and physically and disengage quickly without being hurt. Look at those eyes, Undyne; deep blue, like the ocean. I could stare at those eyes all day, she thinks, blushes faintly, frowns.

“What is it?” Chara asks. Her voice is like gunshots, sharp and to-the-point despite its softness. Undyne’s eyes flick back to Chara, run over her fine face, pinnedback curls.

“Nothing,” Undyne lies glibly. “Wondering where our food is?”

“Are you hungry?” Chara asks, rearranging her fork and spoon, glancing downward demurely.

Undyne nods, smiles toothily. “Starved,” she says, putting a little growl into her words. She watches Chara closely but there is no impression; nothing changes, like rock or air. Like dinner with Hannibal, Undyne thinks.

 

▪ ▪ ▪

 

They make small talk until their food comes. Undyne learns that Chara had a sister at some point, although they haven’t spoken in years. She learns that she prefers flats to heels, that she’s a small B-cup, that her favorite kind of food is Mexican but Chinese is good too, that she usually doesn’t listen to music but when she does it’s something called industrial, whatever that is, that she never had a cavity when she was a child, and that she usually goes to bed around midnight and sleeps until eight. Chara learns that Undyne is a little afraid of her.

 

▪ ▪ ▪

 

When they get their food Undyne digs in and Chara watches for a moment, watches those teeth flash and those fingers bend nimbly around fork and knife and spoon. Ah, a ripple: Undyne is beautiful, Chara thinks. Whatever brought that on or whatever became of it is lost in the still water. Chara eats daintily, chews each mouthful twenty times before swallowing. Undyne notices out of the corner of her eye, blushes again, eats slower. Chara notices.

“It’s alright,” she says.

“Hmm?” Undyne grunts, mouth full. She swallows quickly.

“You can eat fast, it doesn’t bother me,” Chara tells her, patting her mouth with her napkin. Undyne blushes harder, mumbles something. There is silence for a while, before Undyne sets her silverware down, looks at Chara.

“Can I ask you something?” she says, and Chara nods. “Why did you want to go on a date with me?” Undyne asks.

The small dark kernel hidden at the bottom of the lake shudders at this point and ah, there are ripples – because I am drifting further and further away from sanity, Chara thinks, and I want you to save me. Because I want to use you, her mind snarls, and then throw you away. Because I want to be used, the lake groans.

“Because I find you fascinating,” Chara says, and there is a hidden note of warmth in her voice now that Undyne seizes on. She feels herself leaning in – hairsbreadth, hairsbreadth – reaching forward – “and I feel something towards you that I haven’t felt in a long time.”

Their fingers meet like electricity, grapple, intertwine. Undyne’s eyes raise until she is staring into Chara’s blue, blue wide-ocean eyes and it is there that Undyne drowns.

**Author's Note:**

> I found this one really interesting to write, mostly because I didn't want to go for the typical emotionless psychopath version of Chara or the maniacally evil version of Chara. This Chara is just Zen, for lack of a better word, and what I found really enjoyable about writing this is that you get the story from almost her perspective. Later I'd get a request to put Undyne in a position where she'd get scared, but I think that this is one such position, or at least if she isn't scared she's definitely unsettled.
> 
> When you're dealing with a character who's really just evil like Chara is you have to decide if you're going to play it straight or if you're going to make alterations; in this case I think making alterations was the right decision, I think the story would have been a lot bleaker if Chara acted like she does in the game. This is why Chara has blue eyes in the story, too, not just to make the ending line work but to signify that this Chara is more damaged than damaging. 
> 
> As far as the damage goes, I'm still a little uncertain about that last part where Chara is deciding what to say to Undyne; I think it was a little played-out and predictable and I think that if I had to go and write the story over again I'd try and be at least a little subtle about it. Again, show rather than telling, and in this case I think it's too much telling, although it doesn't compromise the story a whole lot.
> 
> I would have liked to write more about Chara but nobody really requests her; there's only one other story where she shows up and that one is a lot worse in my opinion.
> 
> Mechanically speaking, when you're writing a story as short and focused as this one, you have to pay a lot more attention to the details. In this case it's the lake motif used to represent Chara's thought process - the end result is something understandable but recognizably alien.


End file.
